Fresh from a revived assault on its board through a better understanding between investor Carl Icahn and Microsoft, embattled Yahoo! has switched its attention to another front, that of internet advertising rival Google.
Yahoo! intends to regain ground in the lucrative search advertising market by unleashing search toolkits that will allow any website to assemble a search engine.
The company is relying on the creativity of developers and website owners to spread its ad reach further by allowing them access to ready-made technologies that could cost millions of euros to build from the ground up.
The new service, entitled Build Your Own Search or BOSS, will allow developers to assemble a search engine using Yahoo!’s system for indexing information.
In return for allowing its use of the service, participating websites will then be required to allow Yahoo! to display ads alongside the results of any search.
The move is being presented by Yahoo! as a means of disrupting the market currently dominated by Google. Yahoo! previously was the dominant player in the search business before it was overtaken by Google in 2005.
By John Kennedy
